What follows below is an overview of our holdings. We do not, as a rule, acquire documents. The bulk of our holdings therefore arise from College administration and extra agency functions carried out by the Rectors of the College. We also hold student records, records dating from the period of Jesuit administration of the college and photographs.

Manuscript Journals.

A Manuscript Journal is created each year by the students of the college. They are a valuable source, providing a parallel and alternative record of the college. They contain essays on religion, history, culture, literature, sport and other topics of interest to the students.  They document student life through photographs of visitors, college trips, sporting events, the college play, study and ordinations while also documenting momentous events like the Liberation of Rome in 1944 or the opening of the Vatican Council in 1962.

The earliest journal dates from 1916 and journals exist for most years up to the present. There is also an Irish equivalent, Irisleabhar na Gaeilge, for the years 1917 to 1919.

Photographic Collection.

Work is underway to catalogue our photographic collection. The earliest photographs in the archive are late 1800s cabinet-cards.

We have five photograph albums (c.280 items) and circa 350 loose photographs for the period pre-dating 1939.

Researchers interested in our photographic collection should consult the ‘Photographs pre-1939 Guide’ and moreover contact the Vice-Rector of the College – vrector(at)irishcollege.org – for updates and assistance.

Non-institutional Holdings.

Of those collections not connected with the administration of the College, the following three are the most consulted:

• Transcripts  from the archives of Propaganda Fide.  Seventy volumes. Mostly 17th and 18th century documents selected for transcription on the basis of their interest for Irish history.
• Manuscript fragments on parchment. Thirty medieval (and later) fragments of what were mainly 12th to 14th century liturgical codices, none of which are of Irish provenance. Eight fragments contain early music notation for chant covering a period from the 10th to the 17th-century.
• 18th and 19th-century copies of texts in Irish. Five volumes of prose (including Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn) and poetry, four of which are described by Pádraig Ó Fiannachta. See Pádraig Ó Fiannachta “Láimhscríbhinní Gaeilge Choláiste na nGael sa Róimh” in Studia Celtica, 3, (1968) pp53-65.